Tens of thousands bid farewell to Morgan Tsvangirai

Warlords in the dock at ICC for 2003 attack on village

Two Congolese warlords are scheduled to appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC) (pictured) Tuesday for allegedly directing a February 2003 attack on a village as rival groups fought for control of the region’s gold, diamonds and oil.

REUTERS - Two Congolese militiamen pleaded not guilty when they were accused in The Hague Tuesday of planning to wipe out an entire village as their men killed civilians, raped women and enslaved child soldiers.

"Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui are responsible for some of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community," chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told judges of the International Criminal Court as the trial opened.

"They used children as soldiers, they killed more than 200 civilians in a few hours, they raped women; girls and the elderly, they looted the entire village and they transformed women into sex slaves."

Katanga, 31, and Ngudjolo, 39, stand accused over an attack by their forces on the village of Bogoro in Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri region that killed about 200 people in February 2003.

The prosecution says more than 1,000 fighters of Katanga's Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI) and Ngudjolo's National Integrationist Front (FNI), many of them child soldiers, entered Bogoro in the early morning hours of February 24 six years ago.

"The plan was to wipe out Bogoro," said Moreno-Ocampo.

"They killed without distinction. Some were shot in their sleep. Some were cut up with machetes to preserve bullets. Others were burnt alive after their houses were set alight.

"Troops of the accused first raped and then killed women."

The prosecutor said survivors were taken outside at gunpoint the following day to lure out community members hiding in the bushes.

"When they appeared, these survivors were brutally executed."

The militia had also taken children to swell their ranks of child soldiers, and captured women as sex slaves.

Katanga "boasted" about the operation, which he and Ngudjolo had planned, said Moreno-Ocampo.

"Nothing was spared, absolutely nothing. Chickens, goats, everything. There was nothing left," he quoted Katanga as having said after the attack.

Katanga responded: "I plead not guilty," to each of the 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity read out against him as the trial started, a plea echoed count-for-count by his co-accused Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui.